The recomposition of the techno-structure within the Portuguese Ministry of Education affects the organization of different services, the profile of their lead-ers, the type of knowledge that is produced and the means by which it is circu-lated. Read more ...

In Portugal, the knowledge mobilized and registered in the discussions over school autonomy and management is at the origin of one of the main conflicts amongst the various actors of public-policy making. This is the result of a lack of common grounds between the existing “supply” in the academic world of education sciences, as part of the educational administration area, and the “demand” by the personnel of the Ministry of Education for “useful” knowledge to guide the policy-making... Read more ...

The heterogeneity of interests reported to us by CSU-politicians, and the consequent maintaining of the existing educational possibilities in Bavaria with only the added option of integrative schooling, could be conveniently combined in the CSU´s decision-making process with the second crucial knowledge element we identified: the present institutional situation, as we already mentioned above. It is evident that a system of separated schools for healthy children on the one hand and all kinds... Read more ...

Scientific advice is a source of legitimisation in the political field. But as such, it nourishes the naive expectation of a hand-in-hand task-sharing between science and policy. Read more ...

Knowledge or knowledges?

In post-bureaucratic modes of governance, the multiple actors involved in the policy process each develop and promote their own ways of knowing. This means that policy-makers are faced with the challenge of assimilating, ordering and making sense of diverse knowledge claims.